- New house approvals reveal a shifting housing landscape, with smaller states now driving national growth.
- Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland surge ahead as New South Wales and Victoria stumble.
- Infrastructure investment and affordability are driving new home approval surges beyond Sydney and Melbourne.
Australia’s housing momentum is shifting west and north. Qi Chen from OpenLot.com.au says new data shows smaller states leading the charge in new house approvals, outpacing the east coast powerhouses as affordability, land, and infrastructure reshape the market.
There is both good news and bad news for anyone thinking of buying a home in the new house-approval data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The good news is that four Australian states had double-digit growth in the number of new houses they approved, according to OpenLot.com.au.
Approving new houses for construction is a crucial step towards actually building new homes, which eventually should improve housing affordability.
Now for the bad news. Australia’s two biggest states actually approved fewer houses than the year before.
Let’s look at both of these facts in more detail and examine some of the other insights I’ve exhumed from the new house approval data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
First, let me make two things clear. First, this data focuses on new houses alone and leaves aside townhouses and apartments. Also, it can take time for approved houses to be built, so approval data shows where the supply situation will improve, but not immediately.
Approvals Are Soaring in WA, SA, & QLD
Of all the states, WA is running the hottest when it comes to approving new houses for construction. Approvals soared by 23.5% last year, making it the only state to post growth above 20%. The resulting approval of more than 18,000 new houses doesn’t put WA at the top of the rankings in absolute terms, but does make it the fastest growing by far.
What’s behind Western Australia’s performance? The rapid growth there is driven by affordability, land availability, and a strong pipeline of development in areas around the metro-fringe of Greater Perth.
South Australia followed closely behind its western neighbour, with a 19.4% increase in new house approvals in 2024. Greater Adelaide leads growth in the Crow Eaters’ state, with nearly 8,000 new homes approved, just in the metro area.
The Northern Territory also posted an impressive 19% gain, although the absolute number of new houses there remains small.
More significantly is that Queensland recorded 12.8% growth in house approvals. Queensland is a perennial favourite with interstate migrants, and when these new houses are completed, they may help reduce the pressure of prices that have soared in recent years.
Hard-Hit Boomtowns in NSW and VIC
One thing you may have noticed about the above list of states with double-digit new house growth is that it doesn’t include the two biggest states of all: New South Wales and Victoria.
In fact, Queensland’s strong performance meant that it not only grew the number of house approvals faster than New South Wales, but it also pushed total approvals higher. NSW has fallen to third in terms of new house approvals.
Now, this might surprise you: the hardest hit areas in New South Wales are also the biggest new-house boomtowns. So, Box Hill–Nelson led the state in terms of the number of new homes approved. But it also had one of the biggest declines from the year before. In FY2025, 16.3% fewer houses were approved than in 2023.
In the second-biggest new home location, the Austral-Greendale area in the Liverpool local government area, the number of new houses that got approved also dropped sharply, by 25%.
Despite their poor performance, neither New South Wales nor Victoria had the worst new house approval results. The states that posted the steepest declines are Tasmania and the ACT, with drops of -8.4% and -14.9%, respectively.
What do Australia’s new house hotspots have in common?
I don’t want to end this article on a negative note. So let’s look at the five locations that saw the most rapid increases in new houses. Before I name them, ask yourself this question: What’s one thing that’s so important to new house construction that you can find it in four out of five of these hotspots?
In case you can’t guess what that is, it’s trains. The top four of the five fastest-growing house approval hotspots in the country have all benefited from improved rail access.
When I call these areas hotspots, I am not exaggerating. For example, the Tarneit (West)-Mount Cottrell region of Victoria approved 71.9% more new houses than in the year before. That takes this single local area up to nearly 1,000 new homes in a single year.
One reason for this rapid growth is that the new West Tarneit train station is due in 2026. The promise of a faster commute is helping make the area a growth magnet.
In South Australia, the electrified Gawler rail line, the Northern Connector motorway, and new local road upgrades are all driving buyers to Munno Para West–Angle Vale, in Adelaide’s north.
For buyers, regions with strong infrastructure investment and fast approval growth, like Tarneit or Ripley, could offer long-term value. That brings me to a lesson in this data. It makes clear that buyers are eager for developers and governments to align around infrastructure like train lines.
These long-term investments pay immediate rewards but also will keep delivering benefits for decades to come.
Qi Chen, OpenLot
